VIII.] ELIJAH ON CARMEL. 131 are told in the next paragraph, Elijah restored life. He who testified that man did not live from hour to hour by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, testified also, and as in the former case to a stranger from the commonwealth of Israel, that God can give back that life which he has taken away. The poor woman of Sidon learnt the amazing lesson, that the power which she had looked upon as emphatically the destroyer, is warring with death, and can win a victory over it, not for some great and holy person, but for her whose sins had been brought to her remembrance by the presence of the prophet and the death of her child. Elijah on Mount Carmel, surrounded by all Israel, while the prophets of the groves and those that ate at Jezebel's table, were offering their bullocks, or crying "O Baal hear us," and leaping upon the altars and cutting themselves with knives, is a picture with which we are all familiar. If you try to recal the impression which it has made upon you, I think you will feel that it has not proceeded mainly from the sudden appearance of the fire which came forth to consume Elijah's sacrifice, but from the contrast between the fever and restlessness of the priests, and the calmness and minute regularity of all the proceedings of the prophet." He took twelve stones according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, 'Israel shall be thy name.' And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord. And he made a trench about the altar as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said 'fill four barrels with water and pour it on the burnt sacrifice and on the wood.' And he said 'do it 132 HIS OKDER; HIS PRAYER. [Serm. the second time.' And they did it the second time. And he said 'do it the third time.' And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar, and he filled the trench also with water. And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near and said, 'Lord God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am the servant, and that I have done all these things at Thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their hearts back again.' To testify by the form of the altar that the people were even then a portion of the twelve tribes, that they were united in God's sight, though visibly separated by the sins of men, was one great part of Elijah's work. But it was not a less important part of his duty to remind the people, that God had appointed the method and time of the sacrifice; that prayer to Him was not a violent effort to bring about some mighty result desired by the worshipper, but was an act of quiet obedience, of self-surrender: all its earnestness being derived from a belief in the willingness of God to make his creature that, which without Him he cannot be. "O Lord God turn the heart of this people back again! They are in an unnatural, disorderly condition; they are trying to be independent of Thee. And they have so fixed and rooted themselves in that which is false, that they cannot break loose from it. The evil power to which they have done homage, holds them fast bound in his fetters. Good has become evil to them; evil has become good. Ruler of the heart and reins, who desirest good, and nothing but good for them, make them reasonable beings, restore them to the state of men!" To this prayer VIII.] DESTRUCTION OF THE PRIESTS. -133 the fire was an answer. It came down as a witness that God himself is the author as well as the accepter of every sacrifice, that all fire must be false which He has not kindled. And then we are told that Elijah performed another sacrifice. The people who exclaimed, “The Lord He is God," of course regarded the priests who had not been able to make their god hear with a rage corresponding to their previous reverence. And so it is said Elijah was able to slay four hundred and fifty of them, Ahab consenting to their death, or fearing to prevent it. A fearful vengeance surely! Does the thought occur to you, "If this book be, as is alleged, not a mere history of that which is strange and exceptional, but a revelation of permanent laws and principles, may not this act be pleaded in justification of any, even the most outrageous punishment of worshippers false or thought to be false, that has ever taken place in any age of the Christian Church ?" I answer, I conceive this story is a revelation of permanent principles, just as I believe Elijah's declaration that there should be no rain nor dew, or his commanding the widow's cruse not to fail, is the revelation of a permanent principle. The one shows forth God's indignation against those who corrupt and demoralize a nation by trading in religious arts and fears, just as the others show God's continual government over the outward universe and His protecting care over every person who dwells in it. The method in which the revelation of these truths was made belongs to a peculiar period of the world's history. In a general way it may be said to belong to the whole Jewish dispensation, including in that the period down to the destruction of Jerusalem. In another 134 ELIJAH UNDER THE JUNIPER TREE. [Serm. sense it belonged to the special circumstances of the time in which Elijah was living. We do not need to have prophets executing these purposes of the divine government, which famines, pestilences, revolutions execute without them, or those which are accomplished through the intervention of the ordinary minister of health and nourishment. But if no prophet had ever been commissioned to do one kind of work as well as the other, we should not have known to whom we might refer them. An infinite darkness would have rested both upon human and natural proceedings, which except through our own fault and unwillingness to profit by God's illumination, does not rest upon them now. Then we are told, Jezebel swore by her gods that she would make Elijah like one of those prophets whom he had slain. “And he went a day's journey into the wilderness and sat under a juniper tree, and said, 'Lord take now my life, for I am not better than my fathers.'" They had passed away from the earth; why was he to stay upon it in strife with all with whom he had to do, with a commission to destroy, but not it seemed having one friend who cared for him or could feel with him? Then food was provided for him; he found there was One who knew his wants and could satisfy them. He went in the strength of that meat towards Horeb, where God had once been heard speaking out of the midst of the fire those commandments which his people were breaking. "And he came into a cave and lodged there. And the word of the Lord came unto him and said unto him, 'What doest thou here Elijah?' And he said unto Him, 'I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, for the children of Israel have forsaken thy cove VIII.] USE OF THE DISCIPLINE. 135 nant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword. And I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life to take it away."" And He said, "Go forth and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And behold the Lord passed by. And a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire a still small voice. And it came to pass that when Elijah heard it he went and wrapped his face in his mantle, and stood at the entering in of the cave." -1 Kings, c. xix., vv. 9–13. There are those who think that Elijah exceeded his commission when he destroyed the priests of Baal; that this was one of the self-willed acts, which the Scripture records, sometimes with no commentary but that which subsequent events supply, of its noblest heroes. I have not adopted that view of the subject. I have not seen any occasion to depart from the ordinary one. But though I do not read in this story of Elijah's deep despondency the condemnation of his last act, I do see in it the natural effects of any great exercise of destructive power-perhaps of power at all-upon the mind of him to whom it has been entrusted. The sense of exhaustion, the cry, "I am not better than my fathers," though I have done such wonders, the hopelessness of the future becoming all the more deep from the apparently useless triumph that had been won already— surely every prophet must have these bitter experiences if he is not to sink into a Baal worshipper, and after all to regard the God of Truth and Righteousness merely as a God of Might. Elijah though he wrought so many miracles |